UX Planet — Medium | Anton Nikolov

The war of thoughts inside the user’s head.

This week’s article is about the mental discomfort experienced by humans and foxes, who hold two or more contradicting thoughts or/and beliefs at the same time. Let’s look at what is cognitive dissonance and see how it relates to design.

What is cognitive dissonance

The fable of “The Fox and the Grapes”, by Aesop, can be seen as an example of cognitive dissonance.

Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine, but was unable to, although it leaped with all its strength. As it went away, the fox remarked “Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes.”

It seems the fox held two incompatible thoughts simultaneously, Desire and Frustration. The criticism used by the fox was a way to neutralize this dis-balance and reduce the mental conflict.

Humans subconsciously strive for internal consistency. Experiencing inconsistency leads to psychological discomfort. This leads to higher motivation to avoid information that can contradict our own beliefs and values. Thus, we can stay in balance and be happy.

Most of the time, people try to reduce their cognitive dissonance in four ways:

1. Change the behavior or the cognition. “I don’t eat meat anymore.” — said the vegetarian
2. Justify the behavior or the cognition, by altering the conflicting cognition. “I can have a cheat day with meat once a week.” — said the failed vegetarian (myself)
3. Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new ones “I’ll go for a run to burn out the extra calories, I will eat now” — said the guy who didn’t do it later.
4. Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs “This meat is organic, so the animal must have had a good life.” — said the failed vegetarian (myself)

How to use cognitive dissonance in design

Creating and resolving cognitive dissonance can have really powerful impact on users. It can be used to influence people behavior.

Nice way of using it

Cognitive dissonance can be used as means of persuasion. Frequently in design it can be seen as Foot-in-the-Door Technique.

Imagine, working on the onboadring flow of your product. Before asking the users for a big favor (become a paid member), you first ask them for a small favor (register for free with one click), a favor so small, they’ll almost surely do it.

Once they’ve set foot in the door and you wait for a bit, you can ask them for a larger favor. In the end, you can ask them the big favor to become a paid member of your product.

This technique works and has been proven many times by many services.

Frequently, when people sign up for free services or limited promotions they might have done it because it was promoted to them and not because they really had the need for it. This is where a small cognitive dissonance appears. So they start dealing with the cognitive dissonance using one of the 4 typical ways from the previous section.

Using the Foot-in-the-Door technique, increases the likelihood of someone doing what you want them to do. It is important, not to be too pushy with the asking of favors, because it will send the user flying out of the door. 🙂 Giving the users time to rest and sort out their thoughts is crucial if you want this technique to work well.

Each time you ask the user for a favor with your design, you create a small cognitive dissonance that is proportional to the size of favor. That’s why the product/service flow needs to be designed in a way where the user can have a rest period to resolve the cognitive dissonance by himself.

Imagine, User’s thoughts after registering for free “ Why did I register for this product?… I think it might be useful to me. … I guess, I kinda like it, too. “
Now is the time to ask for another small favor and then again wait before the next one.

The more favors the user has done previously for you, the more you can ask from him/her next time. Getting the user invested in your product creates trust and dependency.

Once you stir the water to catch the fish, wait for the water to settle before you can catch another fish.

Use cognitive dissonance sparingly and you will be able to befriend many users with your design.

Not so nice way to use cognitive dissonance

Creating dissonance in the user’s mind is frequently used in marketing. It is very efficient strategy and that’s why so many companies are using it.

However, sometimes it gets misused. Instead of using to warm up the users and provide them with good experience, marketers(including designers) are getting too aggressive. They try to directly push the user in the door and flip him on headstand so all the money can drop from his pocket. That’s not cool!

For example, popup modals that are creating a strong cognitive dissonance for the sake of conversion.

Modal creating a strong cognitive dissonance

The modal above tries to tell me “Hey are you that stupid that you don’t want free assets and 10% discount?” This creates a cognitive dissonance in my head. But there is no space for panic. Designers have provided an “OUT” way of that dissonance. It is in front of my face, I just need to click “Continue”.

I actually have an improvement idea. They can make a second popup after I close the first one. “Are you sure you really don’t want 10% discount?” to make me doubt my first decision. This way they will overload my cognitive dissonance capacity and I will close the whole browser tab! Personally, I have several sites that I’ve stopped visiting after experiencing these types of modals.

Designers must avoid creating such manipulative and unethical designs. Even if it helps the conversion rate in the short term, in the long term it creates bad user experience.

Final thoughts

Cognitive dissonance gives you the power to persuade users and turn them into “friends” of your product. That is only if you use it wisely. Be a good designer and persuade users ethically, so they can have nice experience with your creations.

Pushing too hard against the user’s cognition can break the experience.

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Some of the previous Design principles:

• Design principles: Selection bias
• Design principles: Root of the problem

Design principle: Cognitive dissonance was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.